


as if i were broken

by oorrrt



Category: ONEWE (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, Falling In Love, M/M, Mystery. i guess, bc all robot fic is sad but this will not end in devastation and ruin, existential crisis woo, human kanghyun, robot giwook, there WILL be love and lightheartedness or i'll eat my pants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:02:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26083147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oorrrt/pseuds/oorrrt
Summary: What does it mean to be human?What are we without a body to contain us?The frantic musings of someone without answers, nearing the end.Giwook jots down an additional thought.What if the things we take for granted are not true?What if we’re wrong?
Relationships: Kang Hyungu | Kanghyun/Lee Giwook | Cya
Comments: 3
Kudos: 14





	as if i were broken

The second time Giwook opens his eyes, he’s staring right into the face of a boy. No, a man.

_Kang Hyungu,_ his thoughts automatically supply.

But no, that can’t be right.

Kang Hyungu is supposed to be five.

“Hey,” Hyungu says, scratching the back of his neck. “Can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” Giwook answers. His mouth clicks softly as it closes.

Wait, that can’t be right either.

“I gave you a body,” Hyungu says.

Giwook sits on a lumpy couch as Hyungu patters around his small kitchen. He returns with two mismatched mugs, setting one down in front of Giwook.

Giwook looks at the steaming liquid. Coffee, probably. He can’t smell it. “Can I drink this?”

Hyungu blinks slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Then why’d you make some for me?”

“I don’t know.” Hyungu fidgets with his sweater sleeve. “It felt rude to just brew a cup for myself.” He sighs and settles into the chair across from Giwook. “Sorry. I guess it feels like I’m making fun of you.”

Giwook reaches out to touch the cup. Its warmth seeps onto his fingers. Fingers. “It’s okay,” he says, enamored with the feeling of the ceramic.

“I’m sure you have questions,” Hyungu says.

Right, questions.

Giwook isn’t sure where to start.

He remembers Hyungu is supposed to be five years old, and Giwook is supposed to be the child’s friend.

No, remembers isn’t the right word. He knows this. He’s not sure _how,_ the same way he's not sure how he knows anything really, but the knowledge is simply…there.

Giwook is supposed to be five-year-old Kang Hyungu’s companion. He’s supposed to look after him, stay by his side, make sure he doesn’t get in trouble. That’s what he was created to do.

But Kang Hyungu, and Giwook is absolutely positive this is Kang Hyungu, is not five. Not even a child. And Giwook, Giwook–

Giwook has a body.

A nearly human body.

He touches the cup again. It’s warm. How does he know what warmth feels like, outside of descriptors and theory?

“You gave me a body,” he says.

“Yeah.” Hyungu puts down his coffee. “I. I remember dad said he made something for me, a little boy to be my friend. I gave you a boy body, if that’s okay.”

Giwook opens and closes both of his hands, parsing Hyungu's rushed words. Everything feels so slow, like he’s brushing off years of static. A boy body. Is he a boy? He feels like a boy, he thinks, but even if he weren't, how would he know otherwise? This is simply who he is, contained in a new vessel. “That’s okay," he finally answers. "I don’t really care what I look like.”

“Do you— do you want to see, I mean, the old robot pieces, what you were in before. It’s upstairs if you want to look at it.”

“No.” The answer is out of Giwook’s mouth before he’s done consciously processing any of Hyungu’s words. “I don’t want to see it.”

“Okay, that’s okay. I put your bed in a different room anyways, the studio is too cramped."

"Hyungu," Giwook starts. Hyungu looks up, vanishing the last dregs of Giwook's doubt about the man's identity.

Giwook opens his mouth, pauses. A metaphorical deep breath. "You're supposed to be five."

Hyungu's mouth twists into a little smile. "Well, I turn twenty-five this year, close enough, right?"

"But Hyungu," Giwook presses, now that he's voiced his most burning concern, _"why_ aren't you five?"

"My dad's project – you – didn't work out the way he'd planned. But I brought it back to life – brought _you_ back."

"Why?"

"Why? Are you not happy to be here?"

"I don't know." Giwook touches the mug again. It's cooling off, temperature not as pleasantly shocking as earlier. "Does it make a difference? I'm just here."

"These are complicated questions, Giwook," Hyungu says, puffing out a heavy, audible nose-breath. He gulps down the rest of his coffee. "It's getting late, I should sleep. And show you your bed."

Giwook points at the now-empty mug. "You just had coffee. Coffee is caffeinated. Caffeine is supposed to keep you awake."

Hyungu picks up Giwook's mug and chugs that too. "Coffee helps me sleep."

"That's not how human bodies work."

"It's how _my_ body works," Hyungu says, gathering both mugs into his hands. He places them into the sink and gestures Giwook upstairs.

"You have a lot to learn about being human."

Hyungu leaves Giwook by his charging bed with a manual.

A manual might be an overstatement. It's a bunch of stapled packets stuffed into a torn blue paper folder. The edges of the folder are soft. Giwook runs his new fingers along them, marveling in the fuzziness of the tears. He decides this dark blue is his favorite color.

He's not tired. He doesn't know if it's even possible for him to get tired. For lack of anything better to do, he sits down on the floor by his bed and pulls out the first packet.

> _Table of Contents_
> 
> _i. body diagrams_
> 
> _ii. basic functions_
> 
> _iii. charging and stuff_
> 
> ...

Giwook flips the page. _i. body diagrams._

_Woah._

In stark contrast to the halfhearted previous page, this one is cramped with meticulous, hand-drawn images of every aspect of his new body, with notes on materials, layers, how everything is stitched together.

Giwook absorbs it all slowly, looking at each diagram, and then his physical form. His "brain" has been pieced apart, inserted in various parts of him, _less likely to fall apart from physical damage to any single area,_ the manual reads. He rubs his left forearm. To think, he _thinks_ from there.

The rest of the packet, information about his functions, charging his body every few days on average, the solar-powered spare battery for emergencies, is already stored in one of his brains. He picks up the next stack of pages.

> _Things to do?_

In it is, as stated, a list of things to do.

> _\- ride the metro_
> 
> _\- come tour the company, meet Harin_

Underneath is a train map and a timetable of Hyungu's schedule. The _company_ must be where Hyungu works, and Harin a coworker of some sort.

> _\- attend a uni lecture_
> 
> _\- borrow some books from the library and read them_
> 
> _\- go to the park and meet some dogs_
> 
> _\- visit a farm maybe_

It's kind of cute. Hyungu has taken the time to print maps of the city and jot down a few choice lectures at what seems to be a nearby university, amongst other bits and pieces of relevant info. Giwook wonders whether these are Hyungu's personal favorite activities, or if they're experiences he deems essential to all humankind.

He decides to peruse this further at a later time when Hyungu is awake and can help him make plans, and speedily leafs through the rest of the pages.

He's about to set it aside when the last bullet point catches his eye.

> _\- fall in love?_

There are no further instructions.

Giwook picks up the last packet.

> _Storage, Lifetime, Memories_

All the pages in this manual – aside from the body diagrams – are typed in the same font, but just from the first few words, Giwook can tell this section was written by a different hand.

> _The average human lives 80 years. 80 years of memory and experience, both tangible and conscious, and the ever more countless things forgotten, are all stored away inside the fleshy human brain._

Hyungu's father.

> _What if a human could live longer? Are our brains equipped to handle ten more years? A hundred more? Our bodies eventually wither away, but if we could preserve them further somehow, would we be able to continue thinking? 80 years of memory and experience, doubled, tripled. Could we hold that within ourselves, and hold on?_

Giwook thinks, if _he_ had a real human body, it would be shaking right now.

Hyungu's father, the elder Kang.

His creator.

Giwook remembers the last time he was aware, apparently about two decades ago.

He had opened his eyes back then to see a man, a little older than Hyungu is now. Giwook had had eyes back then too. But that was about it.

The man had fumbled around a bit, moving in and out of Giwook's field of sight, his hands fluttering here and there. Hands that, only moments later, covered Giwook's vision.

Darkness, movement, nothingness.

And then Giwook opened his eyes again, earlier today, to Kang Hyungu, 25, and a suspicious lack of the elder Kang anywhere.

Hyungu is asleep. Giwook will have to wait and ask about it tomorrow. But what if... what if his father is dead? Would it be right of Giwook to pry? The average human might live 80 years, but humans are so fragile, so susceptible to fatal damage. And there had to be some reason Hyungu brought him back _now._

Giwook turns his attention back to the packet with what he can only describe as a burdensome heart. He has a heart, kind of, another chip of memory encased in his left chest. It was in the diagrams.

The following pages are filled with notes, handwritten annotations filling every gap between the neatly typed lines. More about the human brain and human memory. About forgetting, remembering, about how to induce forgetting and remembering. Electricity. Preservation.

Giwook doesn't understand any of it.

Irritated, he taps his feet in frustrated rhythmic dissonance. None of this makes sense to him, not the words, the drawings, the careful analysis nor the calculated observations. Shouldn't he, a robot, manmade intelligence, be more receptive to his own creator's thoughts?

But no, the agitated information swirls in all of his brains, an insect swarm in each. He straightens out the packets, shuts the folder, and barely stops himself from chucking it across the room, dropping it haphazardly on a side table instead.

He's feeling a bit woozy. Hyungu must have left him unplugged long before he woke earlier tonight.

Before settling into his bed, Giwook makes a quick trip downstairs and snags a quilt off the couch. Maybe he can't get physically uncomfortable the way a human would, lying on a metal table for hours, but the reflective silver surface feels bare and unwelcoming. And the blanket is soft, warm. He holds it against his body as if it could shield him from all this confusion, the threatening unfamiliarity of a world he's barely known for hours.

Hopefully Hyungu doesn't mind.

Setting a mental wake-up call for a few hours later, he plugs himself in – three cords to the back of his neck, one on each wrist that's a little difficult to manage on his own – and shuts down.

Darkness, nothingness.

The next day, Giwook opens his eyes to no fanfare. No birds, no Hyungu, no alarms ringing in his new ears. There are no windows in this room, no way to tell time has passed at all. He's suddenly, simply, aware again.

He sits up and glances at the manual. It's still lying there, on the side table where he had tossed it the night prior. But something about it seems just a little off.

Unplugging himself and sliding off the charging bed in one satisfyingly smooth motion, he heads straight for the table and flips the folder open.

The third packet is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> my laptop is Broken if you comment here you will make me deeply grateful and i will cherish it dearly but if you'd like a timely response i am more accessible on mobile-friendly sites
> 
> [twt](http://twitter.com/keonfeet) | [cc](http://curiouscat.me/oorrrt)


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